Commedia De'll Arte

Commedia De'll Arte meaing the comedy of the art, and this theatre genre began in the 16th century where it first began in Italy. This type of style required a strong sense of ensemble acting and to improvise around any given scenario. The actors wore masks and always had to respond to the other actors and to the audience, the actors represented stock characters meaning they were fixed social types. The point of the performances was to reach a humorous climax, the actors first started as street performers and then moved towards acting troupes, each actor was skilled in a specific stock character. This was Colins work shop to inform us what Comedia D'ell Arte was all about, which I think he did a very good job at, although he was a bit nervous but that's normal and later became more comfortable. Colin made us do an activity where one person exits the room and we all choose to play a stereo typical character, I played a 'flirt' and my fellow classmates played as a french tourist and an undercover spy etc. When the person entered the room again, he/she had to predict what characters we were playing by how well we acted it out, the point is to try not to make it too obvious straight away what you are, otherwise that spoils the fun. I went in as a flirt and started flirting with Morcom I could see he was getting uncomfortable and thought my character would be so easy to know what I was, however throughout the whole game I was trying my hardest to flirt with him and the french tourist trying to make it a bit obvious in the end yet he still couldn't get it, only after the game finished I told him my character. I don't know whether I wasn't playing my character well enough or he just had a hard time guessing since I wasn't a specific enough character like a cheerleader etc. I found this game to be a lot of fun and also a good warm up to become a stereo type. I liked this part of theatre a lot since Comedia is about exagoration, improvisation, speech and movements are what is important, as long as you know your character's characteristics etc it should be easy to do. However since we never played stereo typical characters I felt uncomfortable at first with all these big movements and expressions I had to do, but once you get into it, you just go with the flow and start to know your character well and become part of it. I always thought that in theatre seeing facial expressions on an actors face was the most important, but in Comedia they wore masks, which I now know helps the audience recognize the stereo types that occured during the 16th century. Every person had to stick to one character and become very fimiliar with it and play it as a professional. I think improvisation is an important role in Comedia since the actors had to work as an ensemle to reach the humorous climax. Sometimes using what is known as a lazzi which were stage tricks designed to evoke laughter from the audience by using the slapstick which one of the characters named Arlechinno used to slap on the side of his leg for more emphasis on a slapping sound. Wearing the masks I think makes it even harder for the character to portray to the audience how they feel, this is why they have to use big gestures that are exagerated and also the use of their speech and tone can show a lot. We were then assigned to play stereo types, I played Columbine who was a servant maid and very pretty, she was in love with Arlechinno, she flirts a lot and know that the men admire her but once she gets to close and finds herself in an uncomfortable position she slowly steps to the side getting further away from the person. Her speech is very gossipy and high and energetic. In this scenario Pierrot wrote me a letter in which he wanted to read to me but Scaramouche starts to critisize his writings and say it's no good, when he tells Pierrot to start again Scaramouche grabs the paper and reads it to me, this was the humuour climax. As Scaramouche read it to me, I would be swinging my arms and blushing with my face, since we did this without the masks and when I found myself too close I'd slowly move away, my speech would say one thing and my physical attributes another thing. I think I did a good job in doing what I had to, however Mrs Morris gave me constructive feedback on that I should make my movements more bigger since behind the mask they can't see my facial expressions, that I have to practice since I am so used to showing facial expressions.

Brecht Unit

Brecht's use of acting style is very different to other playwrights, I realized that since he uses epic theatre him and Stanislwaski's way of teaching were almost the same, however Brecht believed that gestures played a more important role in his performances whereas Stanislwaski was more about the facial expressions. I found it an interesting way of acting, I always thought acting was about trying to interact with the audience and make them feel emotionally attached, but when I learned about epic theatre it was not always the case. I did not know how an audience cannot get attached to the characters, but then I learned this was done for a reason, it was so that rather entertaining the audience, the play becomes an awareness and message and the gestures and actions happening on stage has a reason behind it and contributes to the overall theme of the play depending on what it is which was usually social issues being the division of social classes. I think it is an effective way to get the audience to think about what is occuring on stage and trying to figure out the message, in a way also participating in the act, by putting the puzzle pieces together and seeking to find a whole image or message in the end. I just kept thinking how can a audience sit there and not get engaged and emotionally attached? when I know I would. But then I learned about alienation devices, where actors use this to build a fourth wall between them and the audience which disables the audience not to get too attached to their characters yet still engaging with them. I also did not know how actors can't connect to their characters until I tried it myself.

At the beginning of the epic theatre unit, we were divided into two groups and were given pictures that symbolized an important point. In our group we had to look at these pictures and discuss what we thought they meant. There were two of the pictures that stood out to me, one was a picture of a mother and a daughter looking very sad and surrounding them was their home, by home I mean tents and houses made of carboard boxes and around them were piles of garabage that was polluting their environment. By looking at this pictures it made me realize the affect of the social classes the rich and the poor. There are so many poor people in the world yet people say they care but they don't do anything about this. To me actions speak louder than words, the only reason I would like to become rich is to give money to the poor and I don't need fancy cars, a house with 55 rooms to be happy in I just need the right and fair amount of money to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. That's what these people are asking for and it breaks my heart to see that there are so many of us that complain about how our lives are not good enough but it's nothing compared to what they go through. It's a pitty that there is even such a thing happening, it's evident that the rich does not care and will only give to the poor if they benefit from it I think, get a reward etc but isn't a reward seeing them smile and living a better life? that would be more than enough for me. Another picture that stood out was one where there was a vulture and a skinny african child on the floor crouching in the heat and the vulture just staring at him. This to me represented how the rich being the vulture is feeding on the poor and they don't realize how much they could help, but only realize and do so once it's too late. This picture really touched me, it just ashame what we let happen sometimes, it's unacceptable and everyday I hope that there's a solution to these kind of problems but the main one is for people to wake up, once they notice with their real eyes and realize what's happening maybe they will do something about it, however it's not always about seeing is believing, knowing that it's happening people should believe in it. Just the 'thought' of it even just makes me want to cry. Brecht's goal was to use social issues like this to portray to the audience what is really going on around them, since some people are just blinded by reality. He wants the audience to leave the theatre with that message in their heads knowing how it affects them and what they can do to make it better. After we looked at the photos we had to come up with a performance that demonstrated these problems, Asceal, Morcorm, Su yin and I came up with a scenario where there is a rich president and has a daughter that's also wealthy a poor shop keeper and a journalist. The president is interviewed by the journalist who is me, and asks questions about the economic crisis that the president just doesn't seem to care about. As the journalist it was a tough role to play, I think it was challenging to not get too attached to what I was doing and focus more on the point I was trying to prove which was that the rich people including the president does not care about the people and only himself. As an alienation device I would stand up and get out of character and narrate in third person about what the journalist thought about the president, it was a way of getting the audience to engage more and to not get too attached at the same time. His daughter goes shopping and meets a shop keeper and is very greedy to her since she is rich she thinks she can do anything, later they become friends and brings her home to the presidents house and realizes that there are so many poor people and that her dad the president has to do something about this problem. He first disagrees but later realizes that his people need him and solves the problem, depicting what people should really do and not just sit there and watch people die, everyone is born and because of that, they matter. I think we did a great job overall in trying to get the message across about the rich not caring about the poor. The difficulties I had would most probably be trying to get out of character quick enough to narrate, since I still found myself at times still being attached to who I was, as being the journalist. I also guess as a person it touches you and how sensitive you are to these things.

Another Brecht scene we had to do was from The Caucasian Chalk Circle where I played Grusha and Su yin played Simon. The Caucasian Circle was a play written by Brecht, it's two stories that come together in the end. Grusha, a kitchen maid, becomes engaged to a soldier named Simon. Soon thereafter, during the coup, she has Michael handed to her. She hides the child from the Fat Prince and his soldiers, thereby saving the child's life. In the caucasian circle the readers will notice that the characters names are very different and not what you would normally here nowadays, this was because some characters didn't even have proper names such as Fat Prince and was only named this way according to their rank and importance. People with more better names such as Grusha was most probably more important than the fat prince since she has an actual name instead of a description. We played the scene where Grusha has the baby and Simon finds out, we set the stage where I was on one side facing in a diagonal direction and the same for Simon on the other side, this way the audience will see we have no emotional connection and this to the audience would be obscure which is always a good thing, this way they would get more detached. Also while we were performing since we could not see eachother, we would portray how we felt through our gestures and also whenever we had to speak in third person we would walk up to the stage and narrate, since I was also the singer who was used to pass time and also sings the words as he narrates the story, whenever we narrated we would walk to the front and in the middle of the stage, to break character. I actually enjoyed doing this performance, it was easier for me to do than the first time, but at the same time there's always room for improvement and I think I could have memorized my lines more and made my gestures more bigger to show how I felt.

Brecht Quotes

IB THEATER QUOTES ON BRECHT & EPIC THEATER

BRECHT ON BEING A WRITER

“I am a playwright. I would actually like to have been a cabinetmaker, but of course you don’t earn enough doing that.”

Brecht is trying to imply that in the past he wanted to be a cabinetmaker, since maybe at the time they made more ‘money’ than I playwright did. However, now he realizes that because he is a playwright a cabinetmaker does not earn ‘enough’, materialistically in terms of money yes, but not in the case of being a playwright where you write and direct plays that make the audience question and think instead of it being an entertainment.

BRECHT ON THEATRE

"Human beings go to the theatre in order to be swept away, captivated, impressed, uplifted, horrified, moved, kept in suspense, released, diverted, set free, set going, transplanted from their own time, and supplied with illusions. It is not an art at all unless it does so." “There is nothing so interesting on stage as a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces.”

Brecht quotes that most humans go to theatre expecting to be entertained and be blown away by performances, but Brecht believes that this is not real art. He thinks that a lot comes from just a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces, meaning Brecht uses a different style than most playwrights who usually hope to make the audience engage and get emotionally attached with the actors, however in Brecht’s case this is not what he tries to accomplish. He wants people to question the actions of the actors on stage, why they do certain things a specific way etc, because behind every action it symbolizes an important message that Brecht tries to convey through his actors and usually what he despises or recent events that occurred during that time ex. Capitalism.

BRECHT ON EPIC THEATRE

“The epic theatre is chiefly interested in the attitudes which people adopt towards one another, wherever they are socio-historically significant. It works out scenes where people adopt attitudes of such a sort that the social laws under which they are acting spring into sight. The concern of the epic theatre is thus eminently practical."

Brecht states that epic theatre is highly about the actors working together to portray a significant message to the audience to make them realize an issue that’s taking place and how serious it is, who it affects and how it affects them and what they can do about it, without getting emotionally attached to the actors, but changing the audience attitudes towards things. Brecht’s goal was to make the audience leave the room with them still thinking about the significance of the play, the purpose most of the time were social issues and how they can contribute to make it better.

BRECHT ON EMPATHY

“If in art an appeal is made to the emotions it means reason has to be switched off.”

Since Brecht did epic theatre which was different to dramatic theatre, in epic theatre the actors were not allowed to get expressively attached to their characters otherwise this will then enable the audience to also feel emotions when watching the performance which then leads to entertainment, this Brecht did not want. This quote refers to the actors and how art is made to be seen and the emotions are still present but sometimes have to get detached and not get too involved by playing the character that’s assigned.

BRECHT ON ART

“Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

Brecht uses art to symbolize his directing of a play. The art being the performance which does not always reflect about reality but rather uses the hammer being the actors and act as an ensemble to demonstrate the matter that is ongoing, all the things on stage helps to depict and form the vital message across to the audience.

BRECHT ON ACTORS

“Epic Theatre is an extremely artistic affair hardly thinkable without artists of virtuosity, imagination, humor and fellow-feeling.”

In epic theatre actors are not allowed to play their character in great depth that they get attached to it, but rather have characters with intelligence and imagination that can take on the challenge of them being this character that they have to be drawn away from most of the time and using gestures to portray what they want to depict rather than facial expressions, the actors have to use alienation devices to make a fourth wall between them and the audience in order for them not to engage too much.